This forward-looking behavior-based anti-malware tool is incredibly small and fast because its intelligence lives in the cloud. It detected more threats than other products and overall scored better than its signature-based competition. One weak pointits cleanup leaves behind many traces. Even so, it's PCMag's new Editors Choice for antispyware.

I installed Prevx on a dozen test systems infested with a wide variety of malware samples including viruses, Trojans, worms, adware, spyware, and scareware (rogue security software). Prevx immediately went to work and quickly reported that each system was infected. I copy/pasted the license key to enable cleanup, after which it ran the deeper full scan.

In every case, Prevx required a reboot to finish cleaning up after the initial full scan. Five of the systems crashed with a blue screen error at this point. Blue screen errors during malware cleanup aren't uncommon, but I've never seen so many with one product. I asked Prevx about that and they explained that the program is designed to trigger a blue screen crash event if necessary to keep malware from re-infesting the system. Most users won't even see the crash because, by default, Windows restarts immediately. My virtual machine test systems are configured to disable that automatic restart so I can view details of any crashes, or I would never have noticed.

In some cases, the program displayed a popup reporting detection of active malware and recommending removal. I always chose to remove the reported malware, which caused the current full scan to restart. That makes sense, because the product won't quit until it completes a full scan with no more detections. Some systems needed another reboot and rescan cycle. One had to go around five times before it was fully clean. I appreciate the Prevx's tenacity!

Under my current testing regimen, a product only gets the full ten points for removing a threat if it eliminates all of the threat's executable files and also removes 80 percent or more of the non-executable files and Registry debris. Removing 20 to 80 percent earns nine points, and if it leaves behind more than 80 percent of the junk it just gets eight points. Failing to remove executable files is more significant and knocks the score down to five. Leaving any of those executable files running means the product earns just three points.

Prevx detected 94 percent of the threats, more than any other product tested with this same collection. Norton 360 version 3 was next, with 92 percent, followed by Cloud Antivirus with 89 percent. But Norton did a more thorough job of cleaning up what it detected, so it scored 7.3 points for malware removal, compared to 7.0 for Prevx. None of the other apps tested scored as high.

In a parallel test using commercial keyloggers in place of actual malware, Prevx detected 90 percent of the threats, the same as Webroot and more than any other product. But Webroot cleaned up more thoroughly, scoring 6.8 in this test while Prevx got 6.0 points. Norton 360 edged out Prevx with 6.1 points. Fortunately for Cloud Antivirus (3.8 points) and MalwareBytes (0.5 points) I give much less weight to this test.

For the current round of testing, I've broken out a separate rootkit score, drawn from both malware and keyloggers that use rootkit technology. Prevx tied with Webroot for detection again: both got 89 percent. Webroot scored 7.1 overall against rootkits, while Prevx scored 6.7. None of the rest scored as high. In particular, Cloud Antivirus scored a measly 3.3 points and MalwareBytes just 3.6. It's worth noting that Prevx successfully disabled the rootkit component of every such threat it detected.

Scareware (rogue security software) is a growing concern, so I've also started breaking out a scareware score. Prevx's 6.0 score is more or less in the middle, while Malwarebytes was the big winner with 7.3 points. Spyware Doctor had the lowest score, 3.3. It just didn't recognize most of these samples as threats.

Prevx detected a larger percentage of malware than any of the other products in this test, and it tied with Webroot for best detection of keyloggers and rootkits. Had it been as successful at cleanup as it was at detection it would have completely blown away the competition. That could still happen--Prevx CEO Mel Morris tells me that they're working on beefing up the product's cleanup ability.Next: Powerful Protection

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